4.1.2 General Dialogue characteristics

Some general characteristics that should be handled by a dialogue manager in some way or another.

We'll now give some general characteristics that should be handled by a dialogue manager in some way or another. Besides giving insight into how dialogues work and how they're structured, these characteristics serve as beackround for the evaluation and classification of dialogue systems. We will use them when we discuss the dialogue system of the Saarbrücken speaking elevator later in this chapter, and you will also have the opportunity to apply them to further systems in your exercises.

So what are the general characteristics of dialogues that a dialogue manager should be able to handle?

1. Turn-taking: When, how, and for how long should each dialogue participant talk? (Example (*), Elevator characteristic (Section 4.5.1)).

2. Adjacency pairs and insertions: What is the appropriate way of responding to a given input? How can one correct what one has said, ask for additional information in order to and before one can provide the appropriate response, etc.?( Example (*), Elevator characteristic (Section 4.5.2)).

3. Grounding: How does a dialogue participant make sure that their contribution is rightly understood, or that they themselves have understood correctly a previous contribution? How can misinterpretations be corrected? (Examples (*), (*), (*), Elevator characteristic (Section 4.5.3).)

4. Dialogue context: How do dialogue participants use the contributions and the conclusions previously drawn to interpret the current contribution and decide on their next contribution? (Example (*), Elevator characteristic (Section 4.5.4). )

5. Ellipsis: How do dialogue participants make sense of fragmentary responses that are often provided in dialogue situations?( Example (*), Elevator characteristic (Section 4.5.5).)

6. Reference resolution: How can participants disambiguate what referring expressions refer to? (Example (*), Elevator characteristic (Section 4.5.6).)

7. Mixed initiative: What is the amount, quality and level of contribution of every participant? (Example (*), Elevator characteristic (Section 4.5.7).)